Nigeria at 60: For Niger Delta, it is 60 years of modern slavery – Rep Dagogo

The people of the region have been the worse for it.

The member representing Degema/Bonny Federal Constituency in the House of Representatives, Farah Dagogo, has disclosed that, the 60 years of Nigeria’s independence were years of abject poverty, lamentations and crude form of modern slavery for the people of the Niger Delta.

In a statement by his Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, Ibrahim Lawal,  on the celebration of Nigeria’s 60th Independence Day, accused Federal and state governments and Multinational Oil Companies of subjecting the Niger Delta people ‘to inhumane living conditions ever imagined’.

According to him,  since the discovery of oil in commercial quantity in Oloibiri, old Rivers State (now Bayelsa State) in 1958, the people of the region have been the worse for it.

Dagogo said the ‘paltry’ 13% derivation revenue for oil producing communities is not being judiciously utilized by both past and present governors who have turned it to free money.

“The Niger Delta Development Commission, NDDC, has become’ a corrupt vessel recreated to pander to the whines and caprices of politicians and influential Nigerians who are in the habit of planting Board and Management staff in proxy for themselves.